In Italian, there are two different ways to say "you". If you're talking to a friends or family, or other people you're on good terms with, you use the word "tu". But if you're talking with a stranger, especially someone older, or to someone who holds some kind of important position, you'd use the word "Lei". It is, in a way, a sign of respect. But that's not the only thing it is.
Back in the sixth grade when I learned this for the first time, eleven year old me was told the Lei was a thing of respect. But the other day I watched a film called Buongiorno, Notte, which tells the true story of an extreme left wing group who in 1978 kidnapped and killed the then Prime Minister of Italy, Aldo Moro. Throughout the film the kidnappers, when talking to Moro, always use the Lei form. To me this seemed odd. If they Lei is about respect, why would they use it? In my mind, the kinds of people the characters were based on wouldn't have any respect for Moro.
Naturally, I emailed Alfonso about my linguistic predicament, and he explained to me that the Lei is actually a lot more than just a sign of respect.
Firstly, and most simply, it sometimes just comes naturally, as Italian children are taught from very early ages to use it. But more than that it's about space. In a conversation between two people, if the Lei is used, there is a metaphorical space between them, regardless of their physical proximity. There is a distance. Think, for example, of a job interview. The interviewer is on one side of the desk, the interviewee on the other. Desks are not that large. There are only a few feet between these two people. But when the interviewee addresses the interviewer with the Lei, that desk becomes the table in the board room. Thus there is not only an acknowledgement of the figurative space between the two people, but there is also the recognition that this space represents the dependency of the interviewee on the interviewer. All under the veneer of being polite. Going back to the film, the kidnappers in real life probably didn't have any respect for Aldo Moro. But addressing him with the Lei form helped to create a figurative but very important space between them. Given that these conversations took place in an incredibly tiny secret room built behind a bookshelf (where Moro was kept for over fifty days before before being assassinated), the figurative space provided by the Lei is even more significant.
I then started to think about the relationship between space and respect. In some instances, and not just conversational ones, keeping ones distance could be interpreted as a sign of respect. Perhaps you're at a museum and you don't get too close to the paintings. Perhaps someone you know wants to be alone and you respect his or her wishes. Or, to give a linguistic example, using the Lei, that space could provide for a recognition of status. If you ever met, I don't know, the President of the US or the Queen of England, that respect via distance would be warranted.
There are moments, though, when distance can be quite have very strong, negative implications. Distance can demonstrate a number of things, both in conversational circumstances and otherwise. For one thing, it's an effective way of showing dislike for a person, or showing that you think you're superior. It can also imply the lack of desire to interact with, or even to acknowledge, something or someone else.
I find it almost peculiar that the Italian language allows for such creation and acknowledgement of space, because Italian people don't appear to be actively thinking about it. When Italians talk to you, regardless of what form of the word "you" is being used, they're usually taking up more of your personal space than Americans would in the same situation. Additionally, the concept of privacy is virtually nonexistent in Italian culture. The language, in fact, doesn't even have a word for it. It's only within the last number of years that they've adopted the English word. If the people in your life aren't trying to be in your business, or if you're not letting them in on it, then they're busy trying to find out about it from someone else If you ever have any sort of embarrassing experience while with a friend or family member, chances are at the next big gathering or function, he or she will tell everyone about it at the dinner table. The issue of space manifests itself in other ways as well. Almost all Italians live in apartment buildings. Two story houses are rare, and even when you do see them they are often still in some way connected to another home, or another home is found in very close proximity. In Italy you will find two-way streets that are only wide enough for one car, and drivers continually find ways to fit said cars into unthinkably small parking spaces. That being said, traffic jams due to misjudged parking spaces can and do occur. (You can watch an amusing example of it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/feb/06/naples-parking-fiasco-holdup-video ).
All these things, even though at times a little difficult to get used to, only add to the love I have for this place. So what if your aunts and cousins are putting their noses in your business? They want to know everything about you because they love you more than you could possibly imagine. Who cares if they tell your embarrassing stories at the dinner table? Those stories are funny. Laugh! That Italian ability to laugh things off and find joy in nearly any situation is, in my totally unscientific opinion, directly related to their impressive life expectancy. Being here as opened me up to laughing at myself- something I desperately needed. (I'm sure my sisters will say that I still have a lot of work to do, and they're probably right, but it's a process). Being here has given me the chance to see how I can connect the intellectual and academic parts of my life with the simpler ones. People are born to think. We're not supposed to do it only when we're being graded. Since arriving in Italy I have felt more intellectually worthwhile than ever, I am in touch with myself in a way that I've never been, and I am so happy. I get stressed here (I'm still a Smith student, after all), but the stress doesn't consume me like it does at home, especially on campus. I've also figured out what I want to do after graduation. If any of my friends who have held me through my (many) emotional "I don't know what to do with my life" breakdowns are reading this, they'll know what an amazing feat that is. I want to teach Italian not just because I enjoy the language and the literature, but because I want to share these concepts with people. Especially students. I needed to learn how to balance my intellectual self with the part of myself that is and therefore should behave twenty years old. I do not have to, and should not, turn one part off to use the other. Sure, there will be moments when I'm concentrating on one part, but they should always be working together. And that is something I wish I would have learned freshman year.
I realize that I've strayed quite far from the the ideas I started this post with, but rambling is quite Italian. That's because, as Alfonso has told me many times before and as I'm sure he'll tell me again, all ideas connected. Everything is relevant. Nothing is too big of a stretch.
In a way, though, I'm still right on point. I've created a distance. A distance between an initial thought and a final one. This time, the distance represents thought. Or better, a thought process. Reflection. Reflection requires space. And reflection is everything. Learning, and thus living, can't happen without it.
If you've made it to the end of this, I am rewarding your time and patience with pictures of the Tuscan country side for you to fantasize over. I took these pictures yesterday in Colle di Val d'Elsa, a town that I seriously considered spending the rest of my life in.
